Children’s vaccination not mandatory, will require parental consent

It will not be mandatory to inoculate children aged 12-15 against Covid-19 and will require parental consent, the head of Greece’s National Vaccinations Committee, Maria Theodoridou, said at Monday’s regular live briefing on the unfolding vaccinations program.

At any rate, the decision on whether to actually go through with the vaccination of children is still being considered, she added, noting that the final decision could concern high-risk children as opposed to all of them.

Citing medical studies, she pointed out that children’s’ vaccinations in the United States and in Canada are 100 pct effective, as none of the 1,005 children inoculated there so far have shown signs on infection.

Inoculating children prevents the coronavirus’ spread to adults and is the main drive for eventually deciding in favor of it, she noted.

She also expressed her condolences to the family of a 44-year-old woman from Crete who died on Monday from thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS), following her vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Meanwhile, Greece has so far surpassed 5,570,000 vaccinations, said Health Secretary General Marios Themistocleous at the briefing.

Providing updates on inoculations with specific vaccines, he said Greece has thus far received and administered the following numbers of doses:

– 4,268,550 Pfizer doses, administered 3,923.064

– 1,351,000 AstraZeneca doses, administered 949,614

– 613,700 Moderna vaccine doses, administered 545,015

– 132,000 Johnson & Johnson doses, administered 104,362

Another 2,070,900 doses are expected from Pfizer and another 308,000 from Moderna, he added.

[ANA-MPA]